Tom Vander Ark

Tom Vander Ark has been named the president of the X Prize Foundation in Santa Monica, Calif., a nonprofit organization that runs high-profile competitions to motivate breakthroughs in several fields. It plans to establish an education prize. Mr. Vander Ark stepped down in December as the executive director for education programs at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where he oversaw more than $1.3 billion in K-12 grantmaking.